Joint action involving sports leagues continue to raise antitrust issues. Antitrust attorneys at Stein, Mitchell & Muse represented the PGA Tour in an FTC investigation that was closed in 1995. Similar issues have now been addressed by the Third circuit in a recent decision involving tennis tournaments. The Third Circuit affirmed a jury verdict exonerating a new plan by the ATP tennis tour that favored some tournaments over others, and restrained the ability of the top players to choose which tournaments to participate in. The plan revised the schedule to make some tournaments more convenient and desirable to the top players, and also made participation in some tournaments mandatory for the best players. The plan also prohibited the top 50 players from participating in tournaments that compete against ATP tournaments. All of the restrictions were justified by the decline in top-player participation in ATP tournaments.
The plaintiff tennis tournaments could no longer compete for the top players, and became less successful.
On appeal from a jury verdict in favor of the ATP, the court ruled that in the absence of a timely objection, a market definition under § 1 is the same as a market under §2. It affirmed the jury verdict that the plaintiffs failed to prove a relevant product market. The court rejected a per se analysis to restraints on player mobility because horizontal restraints are necessary for the tennis tour, like other sports, to make the product available at all. It rejected a "quick look" analysis because in the context of a tennis tour, the net competitive impact of a restraint on the top players with plausible competitive justifications was not immediately apparent. The court did not find it necessary to decide whether the tennis tour was a single enterprise for § 1 purposes. Nor did the court decide whether the district court properly ruled that there could be no personal liability against the ATP directors unless they participated in inherently unlawful acts.
Deutscher Tennis Bund v. ATP Tour, Inc., No. 08-4123. (3d Cir. June 25, 2010).
